A Note to Readers

I get differing reactions from people when I tell them I’m going to be traveling for a year or so. Generally speaking, the older the person the more excited the reaction. People around my age, however, tend to be a little more reserved in their interest. An older person will say something like “That’s so cool! You’ll never regret doing this. You’re going to grow and learn so much!” Whereas a younger person might say something along the lines of “Cool man, that’s awesome.”

Truth be told I don’t really like telling people about my immediate travel plans—young or old. It just seems so fake whenever I say “I’ll be traveling around the world for a year.” It’s the sort of phrase that’s usually heard in some satiric cartoon about a pedantic dinner guest. Maybe that’s how I appear to my peers when I tell them about my plans, hence their stifled reactions; and maybe older people’s excitement is due in part to my plans having that sun-rise sheen of youth, which is charming in the way that watching a toddler first discover the swing set is charming.

Whatever the case may be, I’d much prefer to simply say “I’m going to be doing some traveling and working along the way.” It’s better this way because no one really cares about what I’m doing, save for my immediate family and close friends of course. That’s the problem with travel blogs, I think; no one actually has the patience or interest to read a lengthy post about the various things one did while staying in London. No one cares to read about how you strolled through the bustling streets, visited Trafalgar Square, took a tour of the Tower of London—Christ I’m getting bored just writing about this fictional day trip. That is why I want to populate this website with as many dialogues and stories as possible, because no one cares about your vacation in London, but people might be interested in the kinds of conversations you had and the stories you collected.

That’s another reason why these Loomings posts kind of suck; I’m not out there yet. My hope is that once I am out and about I will disappear from the dialogues and stories posted here. Elliott will not be a character. The characters will be where he is and who he meets. I will become, as Emerson called it, a transparent eyeball, who simply records what transpires. How right Emerson was to call it a transparent eyeball, for it is not the eye itself that is interesting, but what it sees.